The 2nd international convention of SPIC MACAY (SM) was
held from June 8 to 14, 2014. Delegates from half a
dozen countries including Pakistan, Mauritius, Sri Lanka,
Afghanistan and more attended the hectic neck-breaking
schedule in the serene green premises of IIT Madras.

Year after year, the volunteers of SM grow exponentially,
making it the world’s most vibrant cultural movement. It
is also completely managed by students with the spirit of
volunteerism. This makes SM the youngest movement in the
world. What started off as a movement to take only
Indian classical music to youngsters soon spread its wings
to dance, theatre, film, folklore, handicrafts, handlooms
and what have you! This year at the convention, the
dance segment had a mixed variety of performances and
intensive courses.

Slide show Performances at the 2nd Spic Macay International
Convention
Photos: Lalitha Venkat

The crammed-weeklong calendar had a sparse presence of
dance performances. The first one on the list was the
performance of veteran Bharatanrityam dancer Dr. Padma
Subrahmanyam minus her signature curls. Padma opened her
performance with a Thodayam followed by a Ganesha
Kautuvam. The story of Ganesha having swallowed Vishnu’s
Sudarshana Chakra and Vishnu’s antics to retrieve it from
Ganesha was told in the highly dramatic fashion by Padma.
With disco lights to support her choreography, she put in
much effort on stage. In her second piece, a Thevaram
‘Thiru Anga Maalai’, Padma’s group of dancers made a filmy
entry and displayed much-rehearsed synchrony. While
Gayathri Kannan’s sweet singing could be heard softly in
the piece, the other singer’s off-pitch singing dominated
the piece. In a pantomime of a performance, Padma
entered from the wings as Shiva in this form of
‘Ardhanarishwara’. Choreographing Muthuswamy Dikshitar’s
famous composition set to Kumudakriya ragam, Padma seemed
to have condensed the movements to suit her age. Filled
with unfinished movements and at a hurried pace, this item
too came across as a disappointment.

Following this was an extra-long Varnam inspired by
Bharatiyaar’s composition. The fast-forwarded adavus
seemed out of place for Padma’s slow motion treatment of
the piece. With highly contrived sancharis and
theatricality, the piece managed to sail through before a
couple more pieces. She ended her performance with an
Annamacharya keerthana ‘Thandanana Bhala Thandanana’. Once
again, choosing a composition that wasn’t really meant to
be danced to, the choreography of the piece became forced
every time she did ‘Okkate! Okkate!’ By the
end of the show Padma had a hall full of students eating
out of her hands with a huge round of applause. One
wondered what about her performance, did it get across to
the children in the hall? Did all of them understand
everything she did? Or was it an engineered applause fed
into the psyche of kids that they must clap after every
show (which they eventually did through the course of the
shows in the convention). Padma had the knack of
communicating and keeping them entertained, be it with the
selection of pieces or the way she performed. One must
credit her for catering to her audience and getting
applause but one also wishes a dancer with her seniority
observed more caution.

The performance schedule of the convention announced a
dance recital by Alarmel Valli. Due to a medical emergency
in her family, she withdrew from performing. That slot was
filled in by veteran Guru C V Chandrashekar, who was till
then designated only to take intensives. His rendering of
the famous Todi Varnam ‘Roopamu Joochi’ had the hall once
again erupt into applause. CVC, as he is fondly referred
to, can give men half his age a run for their money with
his dance. A greatly inspiring performance left the hall
of children highly enthusiastic.

Pt Birju Maharaj’s performance on the last all-night
festival ended up being an exercise in repetition. Every
year, the Kathak maestro and his prime disciple Saswati
Sen are invited to the conventions. Every year they put
together more or less the same pieces. As a convention
regular senior Spic Macay volunteer reeled off in a
prediction before the concert “an opening piece, Saswati’s
solo pieces, Maharaj-ji showing a train, or birds and
animals, a dialogue between two friends, a telephone sound
and a jugalbandi between the two.” After the performance
one felt that the volunteer couldn’t have been more
appropriate in his forecast! If SM went into their own
archives, they shouldn’t be surprised to find what all
this fuss is about. Added to this was a senior in the
wings who kept waving to the children to get up and
welcome the artistes with huge applause before and after
the show. What culture does this breed among children? And
what is SM doing in the long run by engineering the psyche
of future audiences to mindlessly clap for everything?

Kids are not the diplomatic best when it comes to
expressing themselves. They don’t need to be either. They
speak their hearts out good, bad or ugly. Towards the end
of the convention a young school kid asked, in all
innocence, “Is it important that all dancers have to be
very aged so they can perform? Sab budde log hi
naachte hai kya (do only oldies dance?)”. While the
response was a loud laugh, the sarcasm in the comment was
hard-hitting. What message is SM finally giving these
kids?

Performers

Dancing girl

Photos by Raja Deen
Dayal

In the foyer of the main auditorium was a rather shoddily
curated photography exhibition of Raja Deen Dayal’s old
prints put together by the IGNCA. While the intention of
this was excellent, it served less purpose to hang out a
series of images without providing any details or have any
experts give a talk as to why was that show important for
all the kids there. Two images from the series were
connected with dance. One was a dancing girl from the
Hyderabad Nizam’s harem and another was an image of what
seemed like a group of dancers or performers getting ready
in a makeshift green room. These two fascinating images
had rich stories behind them for sure! If only the
audiences was allowed to know with the help of a
well-informed curator. It was a welcome gesture for
SM to have collaborated with photography segment as well.
One hopes their future such collaborations would be more
fruitful, informative and generate further curiosity among
youngsters attending the convention.

The intensives this year were a mixed bag too. Pondicherry
based Odissi dancer Sangeeta Dash, Mohiniattam dancer
Gopika Varma, Kuchipudi by Vyjayanthi Kashi, Kathak by
Malabika Mitra and Bharatanatyam by Guru CVC. On an
afternoon of faulty programming and filling in slots, a
few of the intensive gurus were asked to give short 15
minute lec-dems. Sangeeta showed a few abc’s of her dance
form and continued into a short abhinaya piece with the
theme of a sakhi telling the nayika about Krishna’s
playfulness. Gopika Varma decided to show the kids in the
hall an excerpt from Jayadeva’s ‘Gita Govindam’ with all
her hair drawn to one side. The helpless kids sat and saw
Lord Krishna craving for the bosom of Radha in the
ashtapadi “Chandana Charchita” as Gopika dripped
shringaram all over. When will dancers learn to know who
their audiences are before they blindly perform the wrong
pieces at the wrong kind of events? While one doesn’t want
to sound like a moral police at any cost, the important
question is to ask if dancers have the discretion as to
what they present, when and where at what kind of
occasion.

Following that was Vyjayanthi Kashi’s presentation that
stretched on forever! Once again the kids witnessed Lord
Krishna killing the demon Poothana in yet another woeful
bosom staging. It was a late afternoon and the already
worked-up and hungry kids sat there as a captive audience
as Vyjayanthi seemed to have gotten lost and carried away
in her own presentation. The only short and sweet
lec-dem that made any sense was Malabika Mitra who showed
a few of the Kathak pieces she learnt from her gurus. On
request, she performed the Kali Padhanth, sticking to
time. Dance is an intimate experience and if it is not
delivered in the right way to audiences, it can lose its
meaning very soon. The seating arrangements made to watch
the performances seemed extremely unfriendly, to both the
kids and to the artists whose attempt to show any good art
went unnoticed.

Overall, the dance segment of the convention stood out for
its outright falling standards. It is high time SM revise
their artiste list. The North East segment was totally
ignored in every possible way when it came to dance. All
along SM has kept their rule of presenting only SNA
awardees. Is there a shortage of any such awardees from
Manipuri, Sattriya and the like? Every year the SNA awards
Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskaar to many dancers and over the
years there is a long drawn list of them who are never
presented. A senior volunteer told us that since SM
focused mostly on music, their dance programming was
facing the side effects. If that be the case, why can’t
they consult some experts and scholars? Senior critics
like Leela Venkataraman, Manjari Sinha, Ravinder Mishra
and Dr. Sunil Kothari have all been long standing
supporters to the noble intent and cause of SM - all of
them more than willing to guide the organization, just a
call away.

We hope SM would audit their performances, convention
after convention. Else the chances of these events turning
into large picnics and being totally detached from the
actual intention of SM’s cause are highly likely. That
would be a sorry state of affairs to deal with. As
senior scholar and critic Leela Venkataraman wrote in the
convention souvenir, “SPIC MACAY is working at exposing
the young to those spaces which only art can reach.” For
this great achievement to be realized, SM needs to work
far more cohesively than it is at this point. Wishing them
a great convention next year at the IIT-Bombay Campus in
Mumbai. Let that be another chance to truly experience
India’s rich heritage and culture through the services SM
has been doing.